Buddha Bar

Press Reviews (4)

• Jay Rayner (24th November 2008)
  
  To create this latest branch of this international chain, “[h]edge fund-sized buckets of cash have been spent on filling an empty space (under Waterloo Bridge) with gargantuan Asian artefacts and then turning the lights down so low you can't see any of them”, notes the critic. From the off, you sort-of-know this isn’t going to be a great review, and it turns out that “[t]he food is that killer combination of stupendously clumsy and grossly overpriced”.
• Charmaine Mok (4th September 2008)
  3/6 stars
  
  “Orientalism, in its most obvious and self-indulgent incarnation, has crossed the channel as the London offshoot of entrepreneur Raymond Visan’s original Buddha Bar in Paris.” In London, though, “the concept seems strangely dated”, but this Waterloo Bridge newcomer still attracts a “cool clientele that seem to dress exclusively in black and bling”.
• Terry Durack (2nd September 2008)
  9/20
  
  The critic visits this “neo-colonial, Indo-Portuguese, high-camp and Buddha-chic” outfit, under Westmister Bridge, where the food is “pan-Asiatic, Japanese-Thai-Chinese-Indian”, and “the music is chill-out, electronic-fusion, techno-ambient-world” It all puts the critic into a “deeply dim mood”, from which nothing which happens subsequently can cheer him up.
• Fay Maschler (14th August 2008)
  1/5 stars
  
  Ms M is back in traditional poll position with the first press review of this would-be trendy Parisian import. “Maybe the French still think that a menu featuring pan-Asian food is excitingly alluring”, she sighs. It doesn’t get much better thereafter.